


I'll tell you the truth, but never goodbye

by catefrankie



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Day At The Beach, F/M, Gratuitous Winger Speeches, Love Letters, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Rom-Com Ending, Sharing a Bed, Trapped In A Closet, half a dozen tropes stacked on top of each other in a trenchcoat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:47:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24113035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catefrankie/pseuds/catefrankie
Summary: They find their footing and regain their composure, and she wonders, for a moment, if he’ll finally give in to the inevitability of gravity.  She knows he could live in the moment, be ruled by tension and desire, if it was Britta and not her – he’s done it time and time again – but for better or worse, that’s never been them.  Their first real kiss felt like the magical aligning of circumstances and passion and fate, but since then, everything real between them has been calm, rational choice, and everything that could have coalesced into something more has been held at bay by the iron unbendingness of Jeff’s restraint.  No, not for her the explosion of tension, the spontaneous marriage proposal.
Relationships: Annie Edison/Jeff Winger
Comments: 180
Kudos: 387





	1. Prologue: wishing you never found out love could be that strong

_I think you should kiss me goodbye or you might regret it the rest of your life._

You regret missed opportunities, the things left unsaid, more than going for it and failing – that’s what they say, right? It’s worth the risk to have a clear answer, it’s worth the vulnerability and the pain to have the memories? Well, he listened, he believed what he’d been told and he obeyed – but it doesn’t feel like he has nothing to regret.

The sad truth is, the moment of his kissing her, it didn’t feel like he was finally letting her go. It felt like she was being permanently imprinted on his soul. It felt like endless potentialities opening up in front of him. It made him believe that maybe there could be enough between two people that it could last them their entire lives, that they’d never run out of chances or love. 

It was a goodbye kiss, but it didn’t feel like a goodbye. And so, no matter how much time passes, it doesn’t feel like it’s over. If he’d never said anything at all, maybe he wouldn’t be so haunted now.

It’s Annie. The door never shuts – the thought of her is always enough to make it open again.

*-*-*

_I’ll regret the kiss for a week. I’m in my twenties, who cares._

It was a lie, and she knew that even as she said it, but she didn’t know how much. She said it lightly, wanting him to think that kissing him, for her, would be like a fling, a hookup, a lark – go a little crazy, kiss an older man, risk a years-long friendship! But he could never be anything casual for her. For too long, now, what she feels for him has taken up more space in her heart than anything else. It’s not an infatuation, not a crush. What had started out as an admittedly self-centered project had, while she wasn’t paying attention, flipped itself around, turned outward to him. Turns out if you spend years trying to prove a point about yourself through someone else, he won’t remain a convenient blank canvas; you start to see him. She was so intent on whether he could fall in love with her, that she didn’t realize she was in love with him before she even knew what had happened; she set out to prove she could be lovable, and instead discovered that he was. And even as she lives her life, moves out, graduates Quantico, gains more and more respect at her job – loving him is still the most serious part of her. She never grows out of it, only into it.

Her life is full and chaotic, she’s constantly moving from one step to the next, ambition drawing her forward. Loving him is the only place she feels like she can rest; she doesn’t have to push herself, doesn’t have to set reminders or have ten year plans. She loves him easily. She doesn’t try very hard to stop.

But she doesn’t tell him, and she isn’t sorry for the lie.

Whether he knows it or not, she actually told him what he, deep down, wanted to hear.

*-*-*

The next time most of them are together is a movie premiere for Abed – they fly to L.A. from their separate cities, cheer at the credits and stand awkwardly at the afterparty, and then go for significantly less awkward pancakes at a diner, after. Significantly less awkward also, because “most of them” does not include their very own junior FBI agent, who wasn’t able to get time off work. It’s a mercy, in a way. Jeff can sit with his friends, the most important group of people to him on the planet, and imagine that nothing has changed, that he _could_ be charming and easy like this if she were here, too, without having to face up to what a lie that is.

They’ve been sobering up at the diner for a couple hours and are starting to drape over each other because of exhaustion rather than drunkenness, when Shirley says, “I never understood what happened in the basement with that un-Godly, disgusting sex robot.” 

“It was an emotions robot,” Britta corrects her.

“How does that make _more_ sense?” Troy says. “I still think you all made that whole thing up, I don’t know why you won’t admit it. I already figured it out!”

“It was a contrived plot device to show how much Jeff had grown,” Abed puts in. “He had to rise above his established self-centeredness and apathy to show great depth of feeling, and that symbolically and literally opened the door and saved his home, cementing his status as leader and bringing his arc to a natural close.”

“Please,” Britta says. “I have more feeling than Jeff in my little toe.” 

“That’s because your toes are malformed,” Jeff tells her. 

“Granted, it is our biggest deus ex machina to date,” Abed says. “I’m always up for antics, and I’ll even accept that we tend to moralize our adventures in an overly explicit way, but the weirdness of the medium didn’t line up with the weight of what it symbolized. It’s like when Joss Whedon revealed that Buffy had been torn out of heaven in the middle of the musical episode.”

“As opposed to all our other important moments, which happened in totally fitting scenarios,” Britta says sarcastically. 

Jeff waves her to silence. “Shirley, you’re the one who told me my heart was my strength, that day. I was just living up to your faith in me.”

Shirley “aww”s, mollified, but Craig – yeah, Craig’s there – latches on. “No, I never felt like I got the full story, either. What exactly _was_ it that inspired such deep, pure love from Jeffrey Winger?”

“Nobody said _anything_ about deep, pure, or love,” he gripes. “It just had to be strong. I feel strongly about plenty of things.”

But now they’re all looking at him expectantly, and it’s been so long since this one truth could have changed anything. What does it matter if he tells them now?

“It was Annie,” he says. “I thought of Annie, and the door opened.”

Britta throws a napkin at him, but she doesn’t look particularly surprised. Shirley nods sagely; Craig chuckles; Abed’s brow furrows.

“Yeah, it’s been long enough, right?” Troy says. “I can ask about that, now?”

“Ask what?” Jeff says, “I just told you.”

“No, before that, and then – after, I guess. What was ever going on with you guys?”

The question is greeted with assorted groans and eye rolls, but Abed pipes right up, “She was in love with him,” at the exact same time that Jeff says, matter-of-fact and flat, “I loved her.”

It goes quiet. Shirley and Britta exchange glances. Troy whistles. 

Abed zeroes in on him. “You loved her?”

“Yeah,” Jeff tells him.

“Loved? Past tense? Or were you just answering the question in the past tense and you love her, present tense?”

“Did you ever tell her?” Troy asks.

“She knows.”

“Do you think it was more star-crossed trope, or more missed moment, ships-in-the-night trope? Is there room for a reboot?”

“Let it go, Abed,” Britta says.

After a beat, Shirley asks, “So what happened?” 

He shrugs, doesn’t make eye contact. “We said goodbye.”

Nobody has anything to say to that. They’re all saying goodbye to each other, now, more than they ever seem to say hello.

“That reminds me,” Troy says into the silence, “you’re coming to my housewarming next month, right?”

“I told you I was coming,” Jeff says. “And why did that remind you –?” He breaks off and stares into space. Not all remembrances of how things used to be are pleasant. “Annie’s coming, isn’t she?” he asks.

Everyone looks at him.

“If any of you say _anything_ to her, I will know, and I will kill you.”

“When have we ever interfered with you and Annie?” Shirley asks, reproachful.

“I made sure you never needed to,” he snaps. “Just don’t go getting any bright ideas now.”

“Things are different now,” Britta argues, “at least they could be.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he says. “Nothing’s going to be different.”

“She’s not little Annie anymore.”

“And I’m still washed up, emotional wreck Jeff Winger. She’s too smart to wind up with somebody like me.” He looks up, a challenge.

“If not her, then who, Jeffrey?” Shirley asks. “Who else are you ever going to be happy with?” It’s only because it’s her that he doesn’t laugh. That she still believes in happy endings, after everything she’s been through, can’t be laughed at.

“She’s going to find someone else, and she’s going to be happy,” he answers.

“Present tense,” Abed concludes. 

No one contradicts him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't written much "fix-it" type fic in my life, I'm usually more of a fun meet-cute AU or missing scene kind of writer, but there were so many themes in the show and in Jeff and Annie's relationship that I felt weren't adequately incorporated into the ending. This is me trying to bring everything to a satisfying close!
> 
> Work title from Taylor Swift's "Daylight"; chapter title from Taylor Swift's "Red". 
> 
> I'm hoping to post updates once a week, because I've never had the majority of a story finished before I started posting it before, and the novelty of regularity should be fun. Come say hi on tumblr: catefrankie.tumblr.com


	2. it's you and me, there's nothing like this

Troy’s new house, bought with his inheritance, is so reminiscent of their old apartment that it makes Annie a little sad. Not that Troy is living in the past, but out of all of them, he seems to have changed the least, needed to change the least. He was his very best, kindest self at Greendale while the rest of them were stumbling around messing up their lives and hurting each other – and of course there’s the not inconsequential fact that he has both a sizable personal fortune and a whole host of marketable skills. He can afford, literally, to have an eight bedroom home decorated in a style best described as “diversely themed”, he can continue living the old, carefree, crazy way so many of them have had to give up. There certainly wasn’t much time for hijinks and zany fun at Quantico, and her own current apartment is depressingly sparse.

She’s been wandering around the second floor for twenty minutes when she finally runs into Jeff. He’s standing in what looks like a guest room, staring at a wall poster for something she doesn’t recognize with barely disguised judgment, and she can’t help it, she laughs.

He looks up, surprised, and she waves at him from the doorway. He gestures vaguely around the room and makes a rueful face.

“You’d better get all of that out of your system, now,” she tells him, “or you might not get invited back.”

“How do you know that’s not my plan? he asks, smirking at her, but the comeback and the smile are both a little empty.

She plays along, anyway. It’s not easy for her, either, she can forgive him a quip or two falling flat. “Jeff Winger strategically being an ass to get out of social engagements?” she says, leaning against the doorframe and crossing her arms. “I think Abed would say that was character regression, don’t you?”

“I reserve the right to regress occasionally, if I feel like it.”

“Well, I suppose you’re allowed your slip-ups. You’re only human, like the rest of us.”

“How _dare_ you,” he says, dry. “I am the ubermensch. I am a perfect specimen of the next stage of evolution. I’m Magneto with better abs and impeccable fashion sense.”

She laughs, glad that it’s as easy to push his buttons as she remembers. He smiles, and it’s warmer this time, more sincere; she makes an effort not to beam adoringly at him, but she’s not sure how far she succeeds. The against-all-odds incontrovertible truth bursts out of her: “It’s good to see you.” 

“You, too. Been a while.”

“It has.” She’s thinking about the kiss – and judging by his abruptly averted eyes and aborted attempt to pull out the phone in his pocket, he is too. “You’re doing okay?”

“Okay just about covers it,” he says. “You?”

“Yeah.”

“The FBI is good?”

She snorts quietly. “I don’t know if I’d go that far. But my boss isn’t that bad, and I have a couple nice coworkers.”

“You kicking ass and taking names?” 

“You better believe it.”

“Ever go undercover?”

“I work in forensics, Jeff,” she reminds him.

“Ever go undercover as anything…slutty?” 

She takes a few steps toward him so she can land a swat, and he laughs. 

“This whole east wing leaves behind the theme of television in favor of music,” comes Troy’s voice from down the hall.

“Starting in the 60s and moving forward,” Abed adds.

She cringes and then meets Jeff’s eyes, and his eyebrows go up. “You’re trying to get out of going on the tour, too, aren’t you?” he asks. She bites her lip, and he grins widely. “Oh my God, we’re _both_ going to get disinvited!”

She shushes him; Troy’s voice is floating closer to the room they’re in.

She looks at Jeff, he looks back at her. Then they both dive for the closet, Annie flipping off the lights on her way and Jeff wrenching the door open and ushering her in with a firm and insistent hand on her back. No discussion. No meaningful glances toward the target. If her life depended on it, she couldn’t say whose idea it was or who led the way. But it’s like that, sometimes, with them. She has a synchronicity with him that she’s never even tasted with anyone else.

He shuts the door, and then the inspiration that struck to make them think this was a good idea disappears, and they’re just standing perfectly still in a tiny closet in the dark, listening to Troy and Abed give a tour, which really isn’t any worse than any of their usual bits.

“Why does Abed keep finishing Troy’s sentences?” Jeff hisses after a minute, and she’s struck by just how close they’re standing, a distance which is only slightly mitigated by the solid foot of height difference preventing them from being literally nose to nose.

“From what I understand, they did the whole floor plan together over skype and a shared excel doc,” she whispers back.

“But is Abed even planning to live here at any point?”

“As far as I know, not permanently, no.”

“I don’t know why I’m even surprised.”

And then the lights flick on in the room outside and Troy starts giving a very in-depth speech about the color choices in this particular room and which album covers they’re paying homage to, with Abed adding his own commentary and the hapless group chiming in with “oh”s and “how interesting”s when there’s a lull. Troy leads them awfully close to the closet at one point, and she and Jeff both creep further into the back of the tiny space. Jeff clocks his head on the ceiling and they’re both frozen for a moment, waiting to see if anyone heard, and then he snorts and ducks his head, and she has to cover her mouth to keep from laughing aloud. He elbows her, as if that’s not going to make things worse.

After an impossible length of time, Troy says all he has to say about the room, and the tour group troops on out. They stand with their breath held for another long minute to be sure anyone who could hear them is far enough down the hall, and then Jeff snorts a laugh, and they both dissolve. She goes to reach for the doorknob, one of her heels gets caught on something on the floor, and she trips and knocks into Jeff. He catches her, but his head hits the wall again, and then she’s laughing and apologizing and he’s cursing her in a comfortable way, both of them stumbling and bumping their elbows on things and clutching each other to keep from falling.

They find their footing and regain their composure, and she wonders, for a moment, if he’ll finally give in to the inevitability of gravity. She knows he could live in the moment, be ruled by tension and desire, if it was Britta and not her – he’s done it time and time again – but for better or worse, that’s never been them. Their first real kiss felt like the magical aligning of circumstances and passion and fate, but since then, everything real between them has been calm, rational choice, and everything that could have coalesced into something more has been held at bay by the iron unbendingness of Jeff’s restraint. No, not for her the explosion of tension, the spontaneous marriage proposal. 

But of course, so much about the way he is with Britta is foreign to her. She remembers with shattering clarity Britta’s casual dig, “avoid making eye contact forever, who are we? Jeff during sex?”, which was and is incomprehensible. Half of Annie’s relationship with Jeff is comprised of eye contact. They haven’t been truly alone all that often, and usually when they were it devolved into a Winger speech, but they were _always_ alone, within the group – always retreating into the private space of their exchanged glances and knowing smiles. She knows more about him from those looks than she ever learned from anything else. And the way he’s looking at her now is all too familiar, even after all these years, and unguarded enough that she asks the question that’s been preying on her mind ever since she saw him. 

“Jeff,” she says, “were you hiding up here because you didn’t want to go on the tour, or were you hiding up here because you didn’t want to see me?”

His fingers dig briefly into her waist, and he says, “Does it really matter, Annie, when this is where we ended up anyway?” 

“I guess not,” she says, slightly breathless.

And then the moment passes and he takes her by both shoulders and smiles at her, a real smile, holding her tight and holding her at arm’s length at the same time.

She wouldn’t trade Britta’s Jeff for hers. Her Jeff is sweeter, more open, more human.

But God, sometimes any version of Jeff is the worst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince".
> 
> Hope you're enjoying it!


	3. my hands are shaking from holding back from you

The core six pool their money and rent a beach house for a week over the summer – which is to say, Troy rents the beach house and the rest of them pay for their transportation to get there. It’s strange, because Jeff has never actually lived with anyone from the group, and yet it still feels more like old times than any other reunion gathering has: ribbing whoever’s the last to get up in the mornings instead of whoever’s late to study group, eating every meal together in the kitchen or a restaurant instead of in the cafeteria, and of course the inevitable breaking off into mini-groups and being surprised with what everyone else has gotten up to while you were gone. 

So he strolls the boardwalk, making fun of tchotchkes with Shirley and beating Troy in a few games, while back at the house Britta’s backseat directing and content-policing a short film that Abed’s shooting of Annie. Most of the footage Abed reviews over dinner is of Annie breaking; Jeff’s watching half-transfixed over his shoulder when Abed notices him and comments, “She’s so much worse than she used to be. She was practically a professional when we were living together. I think everything’s making her laugh now because she doesn’t have enough outlet, since her job’s so serious that she can’t ever let her guard down.”

“That’s a depressing evaluation,” Jeff says uncomfortably.

“I know,” Abed says. “I told her she should move to L.A. with me and be in all my movies, like Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter. She could be an FBI agent on the big screen. But she said no.”

Jeff nods and reaches for his beer, but can’t help pointing out, “Aren’t Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter married?”

“You don’t have to worry about Annie and me, Jeff. We only kissed that one time.”

Jeff chokes. “You only _what_?”

“It was paintball, I don’t think it counts.”

He coughs, swallows painfully. “We’re getting free passes for stuff that happened during paintball, now?”

“No, I was just trying to make you feel better.” 

“Shut up, Abed.”

The next day finds them all out on the beach. Britta is alternating between flirting with a guy selling boardwalk jewelry and swimming out past the buoys despite, or perhaps because of, repeated warnings from the lifeguard. Abed and Troy have devised a complicated game which seems to have something to do with water guns, types of seashells with different assigned point values, and timed building of various sand fortresses. Shirley claims to be relaxing, which involves spending an awful lot of time going back and forth from the house to make snacks which she can then serve to everyone. Annie is collecting shells and returning to re-apply sunscreen every ninety minutes, and Jeff is pretending, poorly, to be watching Troy and Abed rather than her. 

“Annie, dear!” Shirley calls, and Annie looks up from where she’s knelt in the shallows and lifts a hand. Shirley waves her over, and Annie gets up, gathers her current assortment of rocks and shells into the skirt of her patterned wrap dress, and jogs up the beach toward them. Jeff tears his eyes away from her legs and busies himself with the book he randomly selected from the half-empty shelf in their rental place, but looks up and lifts his sunglasses to offer her a squinty smile when she stops at the edge of the towels. 

She smiles back distractedly and drops to her knees to transfer her latest finds to the steadily growing pile of beach junk on her towel behind him. “Shirley, look at this!”

Shirley looks at whatever it is, and coos appreciatively. “Oh, but honey, you’ve got your nice cover-up all wet.” 

“That’s okay,” Annie answers cheerfully, “if I lay it out it’ll dry soon enough.” There’s the unmistakable sound of voluminous fabric being removed.

“Oh, what a pretty pattern,” Shirley says, in the voice that definitely means “ _on not nearly enough clothes, I’d better pray for you_ ”. Jeff doesn’t turn around. 

“Aww, thanks. Now, did you need something?”

“Yes, there’s homemade fruit popsicles in the freezer back at the house, and I was going to go fetch them. Can you keep an eye on the coolers and things until I get back? Jeff’s too distracted.”

“Hey,” he says.

“I don’t think anybody’s going to bother the coolers, even if Jeff’s distracted,” Annie says reasonably.

“Could you just stay and keep him company?” Shirley wheedles.

“Shirley,” Jeff warns.

“No, it’s no problem,” Annie says, and then she’s stepping around the bags and coolers and laying out a towel next to his. 

“Great!” Shirley says. “You two talk, and I’ll be back before you know it.”

“And then gone again when the cupcakes need to come out of the oven,” Jeff mutters, but she’s already too far to hear him.

Annie lowers herself to the ground and stretches out. “What do you want to bet she also comes back with a spare dress she just happened to have lying around in my size?” 

He looks at her sideways. Navy blue polka-dotted bikini, like something out of a vintage pin-up. “Ridiculous, right? You look totally old-fashioned.”

She laughs. “How’s your book?”

“Terrific.”

“Looks like you’ve read a page and a half in three hours.”

“Joke’s on you, I’ve read _maybe_ four words.”

“Oh, you _are_ distracted,” she says with mock sympathy.

“Annie!” Troy comes tearing into view and slides to a stop on his knees in front of them.

“Aren’t you going to get some kind of sand burn that way?” Jeff asks.

“Shut up, Jeff, there’s no time,” Troy says. “Annie, I need your help. Abed found a rock with a hole through the middle, do you have _anything_ that could beat that point total?”

“I told you, you guys can’t have any of my stuff,” Annie retorts.

“I’d bring it right back,” Troy begs. “A couple sand dollars would totally be enough to kick his ass and bring this battle back into the water where I have a chance.”

“I’m not picking sides,” Annie answers primly. “You’ll have to beat him on your own.”

“But you’ve already taken all the good stuff!”

“Annie Edison, single-handedly emptying the ocean of flotsam and jetsam,” Jeff deadpans. “It’s a post-flotsam world we’re living in, now. You’d better learn to adjust.” She elbows him. 

Abed runs up from the opposite direction. “Guys, is he cheating?”

“No,” says Annie, at the same time that Jeff says, “He’s certainly trying.”

Abed hefts his water gun and lands multiple solid hits on Troy, some of which glance off him and hit Annie in the face. She gasps. “Sorry, Annie,” Abed says. Then, to Troy: “She can’t help you now.”

“How could you?” Troy wails. “She was our friend!”

“You tried to turn her against me,” Abed replies.

“Don’t quote the Star Wars prequels to me!” Troy yells. He does a wobbly somersault, pulls a tiny water pistol out of his cargo pocket with which he totally fails to hit Abed, and then they’re off again. Shaking his head, Jeff reaches behind him and pulls a spare, dry towel out of a bag and offers it to Annie; she takes it with a wordless smile and dabs the saltwater out of her eyes. 

“You know,” Jeff says, “for best friends, they sure do find a lot of excuses to fight each other to the death.”

“Oh, please,” she answers wryly, “don’t we all?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I think you and I teamed up more than we ever faced off.”

She “hmm”s skeptically, then subsides into silence, shutting her eyes and tilting her head back into the sun. Jeff looks reluctantly back at his book, and reads the same half a sentence over again.

“You know, you were the best friend I ever had.”

His eyes snap over, but she’s not looking at him, she’s watching the waves. “What?” he says, caught off guard and afraid he somehow misheard or misunderstood.

“What Troy and Abed have is this crazy, insurmountable bond,” she answers, almost as if he didn’t say anything. “It never changes, even if they change, and no one else can break into it, no matter how close they get.”

“Yeah?”

She looks at him, steady. “For a long time, I didn’t think I’d ever have anything like that.”

He breaks eye contact. “Friends were sort of a new phenomenon, for me, in general.”

“For me, too,” she says, without much bitterness.

“And then, I guess, I never thought about _best_ friends,” he says. “Didn’t really believe in it. I had – all of you. And you were my family. But also, I just needed all of you for something different.”

That makes her laugh. “Always the utilitarian. What did you need me for?”

“Well, it wasn’t to reflect my own control issues back at me, if that’s what you mean.” 

She smacks him. 

He knows this could be a speech, can find without any effort the place where the silver-tongued words come from, and exactly what they would be: _I needed you to be a conscience when I didn’t trust my own. To be the one untarnished good thing in life worth protecting. To be my partner when everyone else faded away. You – I just needed you._ “I needed you for everything important,” he says. “I think maybe you were the best friend I ever had, too.”

She leans over and bumps him with her shoulder. 

Shirley returns, having fetched the popsicles and also extracted Britta from the clutches of her assorted transients. Britta pressures Jeff into eating a popsicle, because “it has vitamins, Jeff”. Annie eats hers quietly, looking contemplative, and then painstakingly selects a handful of sand dollars and pulls out a water gun so large that it shouldn’t have fit in her unassuming purse, and with a “thanks” to Shirley and a salute to Britta, she runs down the beach and throws herself into the middle of Troy and Abed’s fight. It’s a free-for-all only briefly, and then the boys team up against her. For a few minutes Jeff watches them running around, dodging kids, hiding behind people’s umbrellas, and yelling at each other, and then he pushes himself to his feet. When she sees him approaching, Annie grins at him, delighted and trusting and half-wild. He tosses her over his shoulder, wades into the ocean, and dumps her in, to Troy and Abed’s cheers. 

She surfaces, spitting but not mad, beautiful and smiling at him and so close. It’s that thing: the insurmountable bond, the invisible, indestructible tether that holds them perpetually at this distance. And it’s been there for far longer than he likes to admit, even to himself, but it was never just about wanting to sleep with her – not non-sexual, admittedly, but also not about sex. It always only became sexual the long way around, by way of needing each other and knowing each other well enough to anticipate each other and being vulnerable in that knowing. It’s inexplicable and inescapable. She is his best friend, and he doesn’t know how to look at her, let alone what to say. 

“You don’t understand the rules at all, do you?” she says.

He answers, honestly, “I really don’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you _so much_ to everyone who posted such lovely comments on the first two chapters!! I am wholly new to this fandom, so your encouragement means a lot!
> 
> chapter title from Taylor Swift's "Dress". 
> 
> I love to hear your thoughts about the story and about the show! leave a comment, or come chat with me on tumblr: catefrankie.tumblr.com


	4. in these trying times, we're not trying

When she wakes, it takes a long moment for Annie to recollect where she is. 

But then, of course: it’s Greendale homecoming. It’s been three whole days of militantly invading all their old spots on campus, jeering at undergrads, and shooting off the odd paintball when they thought they could get away with it. Dean Pelton got choked up every time he saw them, and fully cried twice. Then they all had dinner at Jeff’s the last night of the weekend, despite his protests, because Troy’s place was too big to feel homey, Britta’s place was too small to fit them all, and Frankie still refuses to tell them where she lives. Annie has a hotel room, but they all stayed up so late, and she wasn’t drunk, but she was perfectly, pleasantly warm and loose, crammed into the middle of the loveseat with her feet in Abed’s lap and her back pressed up against Jeff’s side. So when everyone else started calling cabs she was too busy laughing at something Abed said and too distracted by Jeff’s chuckle in her ear to call one of her own. When everyone else left and the apartment was suddenly too quiet, then she dug for her phone lost somewhere beneath the couch cushions, but Jeff grumbled at her, scooped her up, and carried her toward the bedroom, saying that she might as well just go to sleep and she could pick up her stuff from the damn hotel in the morning. She remembers laughing and squirming and telling him that she’s had hand-to-hand training, she could take him out now, but he just flung her onto the bed and said he knows she’s been able to take him out for years. She remembers grabbing his arm as he turned to go, and when he turned around looking a little wary, no doubt bracing himself for doe-eyes and pleading and already starting to pull away from her as usual, she stood up abruptly and then twisted around him and knocked him into bed while he was off balance. She laughed at the look of shock on his face, and was still laughing when he snaked a long arm out and tugged her down onto the mattress next to him. “Remember the blanket fort?” he said, and she said, “Which one?”, and it wasn’t funny but he laughed anyway, and the “remember when”s flew back and forth until they fell asleep on opposite sides of the bed.

They’re not on opposite sides of the bed now; she can feel his breath on the back of her neck, and he has an arm slung loosely around her waist. She must inadvertently catch her breath, and he must be awake enough to notice, because he grunts and mumbles, “Hey.”

“Hey,” she answers cautiously, but the expected “Annie, I know nothing happened, but somehow this was still a mistake,” doesn’t come. His breathing is lazy, she can feel his heartbeat and it’s steady and calm. He’s not showing any signs of self-hatred, or in fact any signs of being at all inclined to move. Her arm is asleep; she shifts her weight and accidentally jams her elbow into his stomach. He lets out an “oof” and then adjusts his grip around her, settling her more comfortably against his chest.

“What time is it?” she asks.

“Early,” he says. “We didn’t shut the curtains last night, so the sun woke me up half an hour ago.”

She notes the comfortable use of “we” in his answer, and doesn’t comment on it. “Exactly how expensive are your curtains?” 

“I’ll have you know blackout curtains are a totally normal expense,” he says, poking her in the ribs.

“And what about the clothes you fell asleep in?”

“Extraordinarily expensive, personally tailored, and totally unsalvageable. They’ll have to be burned.”

She laughs softly.

“What time’s your flight?” he asks.

“Two. I don’t have to go into work until tomorrow.”

“Well, that’s something.”

“I do have to check out of my hotel by eleven.”

He groans. “Why’d you even get a hotel?”

She twists around to look him in the face. “ _What_?”

He rolls his eyes. “You could’ve stayed with Britta, you could’ve stayed with Troy…”

“Oh wait, I’m sorry, have I inconvenienced you?”

“Hugely.” But he grins, and lifts his head to kiss her temple before burrowing back into the pillows. 

She tells him, “You’re being very un-Jeff-like.” 

“Feels Jeff-like to me,” he says, but the words are completely belied by the fact that he’s tracing his fingers up and down her arm. 

“The Greendale Jeff of old would have given three speeches and also run halfway across the state by now.”

“Would you like a speech?” he asks lazily.

“Do you have one queued up?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, let’s hear it.”

He says, “I miss you.”

Her heartbeat skips erratically, and she answers, “I’m right here, Jeff.”

“I miss being your best friend. I miss being Jeff-and-Annie.”

She rolls over, pushes herself up onto a forearm, and looks down at him. He takes her free hand in his and starts playing absently with her fingers, and he’s looking at her with that old familiar look, now; it’s the way he used to look at her their last year at school, and maybe it’s not self-hatred but it still looks dark somehow. “We were never really Jeff-and-Annie,” she says, shakily, “you know that. And do you see any other candidates for best friend? You’re still all I’ve got.”

He reaches up to push a strand of hair behind her ear. “You know you could do better.”

“That’s not the _point_ , Jeff,” she snaps, twisting out of his grasp and out of his reach. “You’re stuck in between this long-gone past where you needed to stay away from me to prove you were a good person, and this imaginary future where I’m, I don’t know, so far beyond you that I never look back. But neither of them is real. I’m _right here_ , if you’d stop pushing me away for two seconds and _let_ me be.”

“You told me to kiss you goodbye so I wouldn’t regret it for the _rest of my life_ ,” he says, sitting up to face her, and there’s a faint accusatory tone now. “That’s not exactly open-ended, Annie.”

“Okay, yeah, I did say that!” she exclaims. “But maybe it wasn’t enough for me that you tried to let me go and couldn’t!”

He freezes, and there it is, it was that simple: his guard goes up. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” she says, pushing past the awful tremble in her voice, “I’m not that twenty-year-old anymore, Jeff, play-acting that we’re going to settle down. I’m not practicing my powers of seduction, trying to get you to give in so I can prove that you want me. This isn’t a game to me.” She gestures sweepingly, taking in the both of them and the bed they woke up in. “I _know_ you want me. We’ve both known that for a long time. So you admitted it out loud – the heart wants what it wants – but tell me the truth, just this once. Did you really want to _be with me_ , or did you just want to finally stop wanting me?”

He stares at her, silent and still, and her heart sinks. At the bottom of the disappointment and bitterness, she finds she’s angry – maybe she’s been angry about this for a long time. “And can you really blame me? How was I supposed to say yes, how was I supposed to agree to be with you, if you were just going to keep thinking about it like it was a failure? Maybe I wanted you to pick me because we’re _right_ for each other, not because you weren’t strong enough to do anything else.” 

“Annie –” 

“No, you know what, Jeff, this _was_ a mistake,” she says, extracting herself from the tangle of sheets and practically vaulting off the bed. She ignores his catching at her arm, and his “please”, and walks out of the room. She picks up her sweater from the arm of the sofa and throws it on over her rumpled clothes; her shoes are somewhere around here, her phone, too. She drops to her knees next to the loveseat and unearths her phone, looks through her call history for the taxi company that picked her up from the airport a few days earlier, and calls. “Hello, I need a pickup, as soon as possible...yes, I’ll hold.” She rocks back onto her toes and stands, and then Jeff is right behind her. He plucks the phone out of her hand and hangs up.

Before she can do anything other than give an affronted gasp, he says, “Please, wait.” She grabs at her phone, but he lifts it up out of her reach and says, stubbornly, “I know you’re mad, but we can’t leave it like this.”

“And how would you like to leave it, Jeff?” she retorts, crossing her arms. “More self-pity and nostalgia?”

“Do you really blame me for missing the past?” he says, quietly. “At least you were in my life.”

“And that thing you’re always playing fruit ninja on is a _phone_ ,” she shoots back. “We might not be at Greendale, but there is _nothing_ stopping you from talking to me other than yourself.”

“Okay, you’re right.”

She takes a deep breath and glares at him. Nothing takes the wind out of her sails more than a premature surrender, and he knows that, damn him.

“I’m sorry,” he says seriously. “I got…maudlin. I didn’t mean to ruin it.”

“Ruin what?” she says, unwilling to let go just yet.

He lifts one shoulder in an awkward shrug. “I was hoping I could take you for breakfast,” he says. “Spend some time together before you leave.”

“Why?”

“Annie, I’m just happy you’re here.” 

She sighs heavily. 

“Maybe it’s not enough,” he admits, “but could it be enough just for now? Can I spend the day with my best friend because I missed her and my life has a gaping hole in it without her?”

She studies his face, and some of the despair is still there – she wonders if it ever fully goes away, when he’s looking at her and wanting her without wanting to – but mixed up in it is Jeff, her Jeff, vulnerable in a way he rarely is, and disheveled in a way he _never_ is. She always did like this look on him: knowing that he would bend for her, that he took what she said so seriously that he’d submit himself for her judgment and accept the consequences. It was something, as a recently recovered addict, to have power over a force of nature like Jeff Winger, and it’s still something now. God knows, it’s not like she hasn’t missed him, it’s not like her life is complete without him in it. “It’s not that easy, Jeff,” she says, but she’s softening and he can tell. 

“It’s exactly that easy,” he counters. “Breakfast, and then I’ll drive you by your hotel and drop you off at the airport. We can even invite Troy and Abed if you want a buffer.”

She can’t resist picking at it. “This is who we are now? We can’t be around each other unless the others are here?”

He stretches, flashes her a rakish grin. “Well, if you think you can keep your hands off me for that long –”

She smacks him, and takes her phone back. She scrolls through her contacts, pretending she doesn’t feel his eyes on her, and calls Troy. 

He picks up on the last ring, and the muddled sound of his “What?” suggests that she probably woke him. 

“I need you to get Abed up and meet Jeff and me for breakfast,” she orders, “or I am going to end up killing him.”

“Killing Jeff?” Troy says. “When did you two have a fight? Did you sleep over?”

“Why,” she says derisively, “did you have that in the _pool_?” 

“What? No,” he says, confused. “I lost the pool years ago when you didn’t do it at graduation.”

She grits her teeth. “The Denny’s off the fifteen exit. If you’re not there in twenty minutes I’m just going to keep calling, so you might as well get up.”

“An hour, so we can shower first?” Jeff suggests.

“Never mind, you’ve got an hour,” she tells Troy.

“Alright, fine,” he says, non-plussed. “Try not to maim Jeff until then.”

“No promises,” she says, and hangs up. She points at Jeff, who’s trying to look innocent, and says, “You’re on thin ice, Winger.”

He lifts both hands, says mildly, “What’s it going to take, Annie?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I just know I’ve had it with your half-assed, defeatist romanticism.”

His eyebrows go up, and he nods shortly. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

It’s the furthest thing in the world from a perfect moment; nothing falls into place. But he makes a pot of coffee, they each shower, and they go to breakfast with Annie in one of his old Greendale tshirts and his skinniest sweatpants rolled at the waist. Troy and Abed don’t ask any questions and keep up a steady stream of conversation, and though they offer to chauffeur her around the rest of the day, when Jeff says he’s got it, she doesn’t contradict him. He drives her to her hotel, and then to the airport; he carries her bag in and hugs her at security, wrapping his arms tight around her waist and lifting her off the ground. She returns his embrace, but she doesn’t feel like crying.

It feels like they’re close to something – almost figuring it out, or almost finding closure. 

But then, it has felt like that for a long time.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all your kind words and encouragement! 
> 
> Chapter title from Taylor Swift's "Cruel Summer".


	5. I've got a hundred thrown-out speeches I almost said to you

He can’t sleep in his own bed.

He buys new bedding and stuffs the old things into the back of his linen closet so he doesn’t have to look at them, and then when that doesn’t work he moves his bed from one side of the room to the other, trying to create the illusion of a different space, but it’s no good. He lies in bed staring at the ceiling, and when he does finally drift off, he’s prone to waking with a start at 3am, surprised all over again to find she isn’t there. Years of being without her, building up a resistance to the thought of her – ruined overnight, and not even ruined by a good memory. There's no avoiding the fact that she isn't next to him because he somehow drove her away. 

So he stays out late, even though he hasn’t done that in years. He sits at Britta’s bar most nights until closing, barely drinking and ignoring every meaningful glance from every overly-made-up girl hoping he’ll come hit on her. Britta never asks why he’s there, but he thinks she guesses something’s wrong, if only because he doesn’t interrupt her when she talks on end about her cats and her volunteer work. On slow nights they play cards; sometimes they call Troy and he comes and sits with them and they leave tipsy voicemails for Abed or Shirley. Abed starts sending Jeff movie recommendations, and he watches them all and texts his reactions. He’s even putting some effort into his lesson plans these days; maybe he ought to assign more papers so that if he has another personal crisis he can distract himself with grading. 

And still, when he collapses into bed so tired that he’s asleep before he can even get comfortable, he’s as likely as not to wake a few brief hours later, and then sleep is never as easy to find again. He gets up and goes running around his neighborhood before the sun’s up; he texts whoever he thinks is likely to still be awake; he falls asleep on the couch watching infomercials. 

After nearly a month of this, he wakes up at half past two in the morning for the third night in a row, and gives up. He pours himself a half glass of scotch, throws himself down at the kitchen table with an old college-ruled notebook, and writes.

At first it’s a rant – _Annie, you have no idea what you’ve done to me, I hope you’re happy_ – and when he’s filled the page, he rips it out, crumples it up, and starts over. The next one turns pitiful quickly – _Annie, I’ll do anything, just please tell me what to do, I don’t know what to do_ – that one, too, is torn out and thrown away. 

Her words echo back at him: _How was I supposed to agree to be with you, if you were just going to keep thinking about it like it was a failure_? _Did_ he think of it as a failure? He has been holding back from her for so long, trying to avoid – something. It’s hard to think of giving in as anything other than giving up. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where doing the right thing means something different than doing what he doesn’t want to do – where doing the right thing also means getting what he wants. Doing what’s good for yourself is bad, right? That’s the truth, it always has been, it’s old, rotten Jeff who wants to pretend otherwise, who wants to make the truth work for him.

_I just know I’ve had it with your half-assed, defeatist romanticism._

Has their relationship ever been anything to him but a foregone conclusion, doomed from the start? When he told her he wanted her, did he expect it to go anywhere, or did he just want to be absolved from the responsibility of making it go somewhere? 

Maybe he did think of it as tragically romantic – it was easy to cast himself as the selfless hero, the kind of character who gazes longingly after the heroine at the end of the film while the coloring shifts to black-and-white and the subtitles read “Jeff Winger never married”.

But – is he just a coward? Is that all there is to their story? 

The pile of discarded confessions grows: wretched and furious, begging and defeated, remembering and promising. He apologizes for things that he, upon rereading, finds he isn’t sorry for. He defends himself against charges he discovers are fair.

He finishes his scotch and doesn’t pour more; his pen runs out and he gets up to find another one. Words are his gift, always have been, but he knows timing, tone, and gestures more than he knows this. On the page, the words seem divested of power, stark and untwistable. He can’t say whatever he wants and play it off. He has to get it right.

The first rays of sunlight are just appearing over the horizon when he finally puts down his pen. Sitting on the table is a messily written letter that he thinks might actually be the truth.

_Annie –_

_You once asked if I ever wrote without wanting someone to read it, just to sort out the truth. Sorry to disappoint again, but even if I’m not writing just for the sake of writing, even if I do want something from you (and I do, I always do), I’m not trying to convince you to do anything. All I want is for you to understand me, and I’m writing to you because I want the words to speak for themselves. As little as I deserve it, I hope you’ll let me explain myself one more time._

_I’ve been doing some soul-searching._

_I don’t know if you know this, Annie, but I have never not given in, ever. That’s the ultimate joke: persuasive leader Jeff Winger is actually king of the weak-willed suckers, the most easily led of them all. I have been led by my impulses for my entire life. If I don’t feel like doing something, I just don’t do it, and if I want something, I can usually get it, and so I do. I don’t push past apathy or boredom to get things done, and I don’t let go of things that I want. The first time I ever worked for something, really worked instead of flying by the seat of my pants or rigging the game, was preparing for a debate championship I didn’t want to be in in the first place. And the first time I didn’t go for something I wanted, the first time I stepped back and lived with a desire instead of acting on it and then forgetting it, was you._

_I have lived with wanting you for a very long time now, and I can say with certainty that if I had given in as soon as I recognized the desire for what it was, not only could I have hurt you – and I can only assume I would have – but what we have now would have been destroyed, would never have really existed at all. Because I didn’t immediately give in, for the first time in my life, one of my pitiful impulses was allowed to grow. I feel for you more than I have ever felt for anything or anyone else. So I am not sorry that I held back from you, all those years. I want you to be happy, and if I’ve failed to protect that happiness, if I’ve hurt you, I hope you can forgive me because, well, I’m still pretty new at this. But trying to let you go is what taught me to care for something other than myself, and I cannot regret that. I kissed you goodbye, but I never stopped loving you._

_I do love you, Annie. If you think that my love for you is something that I’ve fought against, if you think that I love you against my will, nothing could be further from the truth. Loving you is the only choice I have ever made. And I make it over and over._

_Faithfully,  
Jeff_

He retrieves his phone and rattles off a quick email to his morning section of Fundamentals of Law to tell them that class is cancelled for the day, and then he falls facedown into bed, and sleeps without dreaming and without stirring until his alarm goes off at eleven. He drives to Greendale and teaches his afternoon class, texts Britta to ask if he can borrow an envelope and a stamp, and then gets Annie’s address from Shirley – she pries only minimally, for which he is grateful. He’s not ready for this to be freely discussed in the group; they’ll have their inevitable say later.

The thought does occur to him that he doesn’t have to send it – maybe just sorting it out in his own head is enough, after all. Maybe he’s self-actualizing and he doesn’t need to tell her in order to find peace. But he can still see the way she looked at him when she accused him of wanting to stop wanting her, and he doesn’t want to let her go on thinking that. Annie Edison should have no doubts at all that she is loved.

He drops the letter off at the Greendale mailroom. 

Then there’s nothing to do but torture himself with worst case scenarios: Annie burns the letter without reading it. Annie reads the letter and laughs at him. Annie reads the letter and moves even further across the country because he came on too strong. Annie reads the letter, but it doesn’t change anything because he didn’t apologize for the right thing. 

It’s two weeks before he receives an answer in the mail, her careful handwriting, the ‘i’s still dotted with tiny circles, on floral, lightly glittery stationery: 

_Dear Jeff,_

He stares at the two short words, caught in a moment of ridiculous affection – of course she wrote “dear”, when he very purposefully eschewed it because he didn’t think he could make it look cool.

_First: thank you, for telling me. Perhaps I should have known already, but I don’t think I ever actually did. I guess in my head it’s always seemed like rejection – like you just didn’t really want me, because if you wanted me enough you would have picked me. But you were always hesitating, even when you tried to tell me you cared, and if I’d ever believed you truly wanted me, I wouldn’t have hesitated._

_But then, I guess can’t say what would have happened if you’d said any of this before I left, years ago. I wish I could. A part of me wants to believe that if you’d told me like this, I would have been ready to start working toward something with you – not the idea of something, not the potential for something, but something real. I don’t know how we would have managed it, but I think maybe we could have._

He stops reading, puts the letter down, walks into the kitchen and starts to pour himself a drink, then goes back and reads the same paragraph over again. _Would have. Could have._ The impulse to begin mercilessly kicking himself is strong – the last years could have been completely different if he’d just picked different words, if maybe instead of “I tried to let you go, but the heart wants what it wants”, he’d said “I love you, I think I always have, and I intend to keep loving you forever” – which would have had the added benefit of being the truth. But he catches himself; he’s not going down the regret path again, when that’s exactly the kind of thinking that got him here. He smooths the letter out – he’s been unconsciously crumpling the corners – and reads the next words.

_But then, a part of me thinks maybe I really wasn’t ready to hear it – maybe I wouldn’t have believed you if you told me, wouldn’t have known what to do even if I did believe you, might have tried to immediately get in too deep, as if we were we supposed to go from nothing to everything in the space of one conversation. That’s my problem, I think: I’ve let my expectations for this thing between us get out of control. I think I was always half-convinced that we were just a little nudge from just – living happily ever after, if you could only figure out what you wanted._

_But now that I see that written down, it’s clear that isn’t fair. I’ve had so many setbacks and detours in my life, and I wish I was better at rolling with the punches and being flexible, but I’m not. I still hate it when things don’t go according to plan, and I had this idea in my head that this, with us, was someday going to be the one thing that went right, for me, the one thing that fell together effortlessly. But what does that even mean? We can’t have everything we want all at once, and we can’t read each other’s minds, so who’s to say we even want the exact same thing._

_But I do want you, Jeff. And somewhere between having a stable friendship and having a stable relationship there has to be a little instability, right? For how long now have we been unable to really answer the question of what we are? If we lean into that instead of resisting, I think we can come out the other side. We don’t have to know the answer, we just have to be willing to face the question. I’ll be the first to admit that I have no idea how to build a relationship – let alone how to build one with you – but we can make it up as we go along._

_I'm glad you wrote, because I think I understand your hesitation, now. Holding back at the edge taught you how to love. But if you choose to stop holding back, maybe we can hold hands while we jump?_

_I love you._

_Yours,  
Annie_

He sits heavily, sets the small sheet of paper aside, and stares blankly ahead.

She loves him. She loves him, and she knows that he loves her, she wants to take a step with him, wants to take a chance. 

All the cards are on the table.

She wants him – wants happily ever after _with him_ – but she’s willing to admit the transition might be messy, might take a kind of hard work that neither of them are practiced at, might require more than just getting the timing right for once. He knows what it costs her to let go of the perfect image in her head, offer to take things as they come. But he also knows she wouldn’t say this unless she meant it. 

The question is, is that what _he_ wants? And is he willing?

Unbidden, a memory resurfaces which he’d almost managed to banish: the picture of their life together that he painted for himself when he thought he might never see her again. He remembers the Annie of his vision turning away from him, because even as a projection he couldn’t imagine what she could want from him. Even after reading it in black and white, _I do want you, Jeff_ , even holding the page in his hand, he still can’t imagine. Maybe they’re going to stumble around and hurt each other and not come up with any answers or compromises; maybe they’ll find they don’t want the same thing, after all. 

But he’s never exactly asked, has he?

It’s been hard enough to admit what he wants, to himself as well as to her, but so much harder to understand her side of the story – because ever since he wised up enough to know that he didn’t deserve her, the one outcome he’s never let himself consider is that she might want him anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always given Jane Austen a lot of credit, but I don’t think I’ve been giving Jane Austen _enough_ credit! Figuring out what a character might realize and understand about themselves is hard, figuring out what a character might put down on a page and actually send to another person is harder, but making the act of exchanging letters climactic is nigh impossible. I drafted, scrapped, and redrafted this chapter nearly to death; I’m genuinely unsure what’s left of it.
> 
> And if you thought this was self-indulgently wordy, just wait: next chapter is the big Winger speech.
> 
> Chapter title from "The Archer".


	6. don't read the last page, but I stay

She would like to pretend that she only read the letter once – didn’t obsess over it, didn’t let it change anything for her, didn’t immediately raise it to the status of most-important-thing-ever-in-the-history-of-Jeff-and-Annie – but every single word of that was a lie.

She’s read his letter so many times, now, that she knows most of it by heart; she’s been carrying it around in her pocket so much that the creases of the paper are getting soft. She kept a copy of her own letter as well, which in her anxious moments she pulls out and reads over, playing his words and her words back and forth like a conversation, wondering if she said the right thing. It’s hard to say, because they’ve never had a conversation like this before. Never once, in the whole history of their knowing each other, has Jeff been that open, that straightforward. Never once has he come out and said what he felt for her – not referred to it obliquely, not included it in a statement to the whole group, but stated it as fact, to her and her alone. 

Some of the fear is gone, and some of the bitterness; it feels like maybe there is hope for them. 

But it doesn’t change everything. It’s still only a hope. And when she checks her mail obsessively and keeps her phone on her at all times for day after day only to find the usual bills and coupons and the usual cryptic texts from Abed, she has to go back to focusing on her life and her plans in it, not spending every waking moment thinking about what has been and what might come to be. Jeff doesn’t usually seek her out, doesn’t usually make his moves according to a plan; he waits until circumstance throws them together and then overflows with emotion that he’s apparently been sitting on for ages while he waited for the right moment. It’s probably too much to hope that his new soul-searched self-awareness extends to everything. They’ll all be together at Shirley’s for a week at Christmas, which is right around the corner; she and Jeff can face each other then. 

So it's Friday evening and she’s not thinking about anything other than what kind of takeout to order for dinner when she sees that Jeff Winger is leaning against the railing on her apartment building steps, watching her approach. 

Her first thought is the irrational, “he didn’t even call first,” followed by the obvious, “he’s _here_.” Her heartbeat picks up and she makes a concerted effort not to walk any quicker, not to fling herself at him. “Hey,” she calls.

“Hey, yourself,” he answers, and he’s smirking that perfect Jeff Winger smirk that says the whole world may be a joke, but they’re the only two people who are in on it and just maybe they can make all of it work in their favor.

“What are you doing here?” she says.

“Obvious question much?” She stops in front of him and crosses her arms over her chest. “Here to see you,” he says.

“No kidding?” He just bobs his eyebrows at her. “Well, you lucked out,” she tells him. “I actually have off the next three days.”

“Luck,” he scoffs. She narrows her eyes. He says, “I got Abed to find out when your free weekend was.”

She lets out an involuntary gasp. “You used my built-up immunity to Abed’s random questions against me?”

He shrugs, evidently pleased with himself. “So what about it? Will you let me take you to dinner?”

“Dinner?” she repeats, feeling three steps behind.

“Yeah, why not? You have to eat anyway.”

She fights a smile. “Why don’t you let me run upstairs and change out of my work clothes.” 

He nods. “I’ll be right here.”

That radical respect of boundaries combined with the forwardness of his being there at all is what makes her break. She laughs. “You can come up with me if you want, Jeff.”

He smiles. “Then lead the way.”

They make it up three flights of stairs on the smalltalk of her work day and his flight, and then they’re both silent as she fumbles with the door lock. Her apartment looks even smaller than usual when she gets the door open, the low ceilings comical with his head precariously a few inches away. But at the same time, his presence there seems natural; she’s never compartmentalized the thought of him enough for it to be like worlds colliding. She gestures vaguely to the Costco futon and the armchair she found on the side of the road. “Make yourself comfortable, I’ll just be a minute.” She backs away from him and almost runs directly into her roommate coming around the corner.

“Hey, Annie, I made it to the grocery store but they’re out of –” She stops when she sees Jeff, and gives Annie a look, her eyebrows all the way up her forehead.

“This is Lizzie, my roommate,” Annie says. “Lizzie, this is Jeff. We went to school together.”

“Great to meet you,” Lizzie tells him politely, then rotates back to face Annie and mouths _oh my god_. 

“Objection, ‘we went to school together’?” Jeff echoes. 

“What are the grounds of your objection?” Annie asks, dry.

“I object on the grounds of ‘ouch’.”

She rolls her eyes. “Liz, this is Jeff, my best and most conceited friend. Better?”

“I’ll allow it,” he answers. “Nice to meet you, too, Lizzie.”

Lizzie is grinning from ear to ear. “So, Jeff –”

“Uhh,” Annie interrupts before she can ask any difficult questions like _what are you doing here_ or _what’s your most embarrassing memory of Annie_ or _say, written any good love letters lately_ , “have you seen my navy heels?” Lizzie blinks at her innocently. “Want to help me _look for them_? In my room?”

“You’re going to leave poor Jeff all alone in our crappy living room?” Lizzie says, definitely being obtuse on purpose. 

“Don’t worry, Jeff’s a champion texter, he’ll entertain himself.” She pulls Lizzie down the hall and into her bedroom and shuts the door. 

“Oh my _god_ ,” Lizzie hisses. “That’s the Jeff from your college stories?”

“Yeah?” Annie says.

Lizzie sits on the edge of the bed and says, “I feel like you didn’t adequately convey his hotness.”

“Didn’t I?” Annie says absently, pushing a group of blazers to the back corner of her closet. 

“ _No_ ,” Lizzie says. “You just said he was _tall_ , I figured he was a nerdy, beanpole-looking lawyer type.”

“Well, sorry, I guess. I’ve been trying not to feed his ego for years now, the habit’s pretty ingrained.” Annie disentangles a hanger, pulls it out, and holds up the dress. “Thoughts?”

Lizzie considers. “Cute. But he’s dressed pretty well, I think you can go nicer.”

Annie points at her. “Right.”

“So. What’s he doing here?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t know he was coming?”

“I did not.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Um, that would be homecoming.” She holds up a different dress.

“Now I can kinda see why you still go to your undergrad homecoming,” Lizzie muses, “if that’s what you get to look at. But it’s still pretty weird.”

Annie shakes the dress.

“I like it. It’s too strappy for a necklace, I’d do long earrings and a dark lipstick.”

“Can I borrow one of your colors?”

“Mmhmm.” She swans out of the room, reappears a moment later in the doorway and tosses a tube of lipstick which Annie manages to catch. “What’s that, Annie?” Lizzie says, over-loud. “Go keep Jeff company? Of course!” She scampers off. 

Annie dresses quickly, throws on the first jewelry that catches her eye, and then looks at her hair in the mirror and gives up. She’ll leave it down. That works. He likes her with her hair down. She pulls out a pair of heels she doesn’t mind walking in but will still make it possible to talk to Jeff without craning her neck, grabs a smallish purse and a light jacket, and hastily returns to the living room. Jeff is in the armchair, looking amused, and Lizzie is perched on the arm of the futon, giggling. “He says you slammed his head into a table!” Lizzie crows.

“In my defense,” Annie says, “I’d received a credible anonymous tip, and he’s an incredibly suspicious character.” 

“It was terrifying,” Jeff says helpfully. He gives her a blatant once-over.

She raises her eyebrows at him. “You about ready?” He stands, dusts off his pants, and offers her his arm with a grin. She smiles back, and takes it.

“That’s cute,” Lizzie declares.

“Thanks,” Jeff says, glancing back at her, faintly bemused. 

“Well,” Lizzie drawls, “I’ll be here. No old friends from my college days coming to take _me_ out.”

“Tough luck,” Jeff tells her.

“I’ll see you tonight, Liz,” Annie says.

They take the stairs slowly; Jeff is being conscientious about her shoes, and she’s clinging to his arm more than she technically needs to. It’s not until they step out into the evening air that she asks, “So, where would you like to go?”

“There’s a place on H street,” he says, adding nonchalantly, “I have a reservation.”

“ _Really_?” she says, before she can stop herself. 

“Oh, yeah,” he says, unoffended, “I have a whole plan. I’ll drive, I’ll open the car door for you and pull out your chair for you. We’ll make stilted conversation and silently wish we’d ordered different entrees that were easier to eat in an attractive way, and then I’ll condescendingly insist on paying for everything even though you make more money than me, in an attempt to prove I can be reliable and make sacrifices. We’ll go for a walk around the block, and then I’ll drive you home and wish you good night.”

“Huh. The concept sounds kind of familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

“Well, I’m no expert, but I _think_ I’ve heard it called a date.”

He’s certainly not an expert; he _never_ dates. He has one night stands, and girlfriends who tend to only hang out at his place and never go out in public, and occasionally engagements that last anywhere from five minutes to an hour and a half. Jeff Winger on a real date – it might be a sign of the apocalypse. “It’s a decent plan,” she admits.

“It’s a boring plan,” he contradicts her. “This is going to be the least interesting two hours we’ve ever spent together.”

“O-kay?” she stammers. “Then why are we doing it? It’s romantic, Jeff – and not in a half-assed way, I’ll give you that, but I –” She stops, lets go of his arm, and faces him. “I don’t need this, Jeff – the whole, dramatic showing-up-on-my-doorstep thing, or even the date, like we have to get to know each other and see if we fit, or you have to win me over with big gestures. I know you, and it’s you that I want. We can just…”

“Make it up as we go?” he finishes for her, raising his eyebrows.

“You don’t have to say it like that,” she says, making a valiant effort not to bristle at him. 

“Like what?”

“Like you don’t think I can do it. Like you think I’ll melt down if I don’t have a plan and a structure and a label.” 

“I don’t think that at all,” he says.

“No?”

“I think you can do anything you put your mind to, and if you had to sink to the level of a pitiful commitment-phobe just so he could keep up with you, I think you could do it like a champ.”

“I didn’t say you were a pitiful commitment-phobe.”

“No,” he replies, cheerful, “I did. But the point is, you don’t have to do that. Listen,” he says, “I love you.”

And she knew it, he told her already, but this is the first time he’s said it out loud and she has to catch her breath. 

“And you’re definitely smarter than me,” he goes on, grinning sardonically, “but you’re wrong about this. Our expectations aren’t too high, and we don’t have to compromise.” He takes a deep breath, and says seriously, “There’s something I should have told you, when I said that the heart wants what it wants. I didn’t want to stop wanting you.”

“I shouldn’t have said that,” she says, stepping forward to reach for him.

He steps back, as if it’s somehow too serious a matter for them to be touching, and repeats firmly, “I didn’t want to stop wanting you, I didn’t want it to be over, I didn’t want to give up or give in. I wanted a future that had you in it – not the trappings, not the picket fence and the societal acceptance and the appearance of stability. I wanted you – I wanted to stop dancing around this thing, I wanted it to be real.”

“Jeff,” she says, soft. “I want you, too, I do.” 

He takes both of her hands in his, and says, simply, “But I don’t want to see you a handful of times a year – I want you meet you at home every day after work. I don’t want to hear about your accomplishments through the group, I want to be there for you while you work for them. I don’t want my whole life to be my job and our friends.” He rolls his eyes fondly, says, “They’re my family and I love them, but I want a family of my own – and I want it to be with you. I wanted the whole thing when you left, and I didn’t say so because I didn’t think you could want it, too, but I still want it. I don’t want to compromise. I don’t want to lean into instability, I don’t want to make things up as we go along. So yes, going to dinner tonight is stupid. But it’s not _about_ tonight.” 

And now he’s shifting into that charismatic, persuasive cadence which she remembers all too well, and oh boy, here it comes. 

“I don’t care if we have the most boring conversation we’ve ever had in our lives,” he says. “I don’t care if the food sucks. I don’t even care if I do something stupid and you get mad at me. I’m not testing the waters, I’m not trying to start with low stakes. If this goes wrong, it won’t change a thing for us. We’re going on this date tonight, and then tomorrow we’re going on another one. I’d like to meet as many of your friends here as you’ll allow near me, I’m going to cook dinner for you, and then we’re going dancing. When I go home, I’m going to start texting you so much you’re going to contemplate blocking my number. I’m going to quit my job and get a new one here, I’ve already started sending out resumés. In a month or two, I’d really like you to meet my mom. And then, four to ten months from now, I’m going to ask you to marry me.”

He holds her gaze, and the moment is both staggering in its weight and also somehow feels like being set free. Nothing from the past haunts them, nothing palpably unsaid hovers in the air. This is the truth, more than she could have dreamed or imagined, and yet it fits like the last piece in a puzzle.

He smiles, and there’s nothing bitter or dark in it at all. “This isn’t a spontaneous whim,” he says. “This isn’t me giving in. This is a choice, and then I’m going to make another choice, and another one – because I already know exactly how I want this to end, and I’m standing here because I think there’s a chance that you want it, too.” 

She grabs him by the collar of his jacket, uses it to pull herself up, and presses her lips against his, hard and fleeting, before settling back on her heels. For a second he’s off-balance, and then his startled look is quickly replaced by a smile somehow equal parts awed and smug. She’s feeling a little bit self-satisfied herself, and tells him, “I guess according to the plan that should’ve waited until after the date, but I know how I want it to end, too.”

“Well,” he says, “if we’re going for the accelerated timeline.” And then his arms go around her, one hand tangling in her hair and the other wrapped tight around her waist, and he’s kissing her like he’s never kissed her before, like he’s not going to take it back, like he’s never going to say goodbye. Like he _means_ it. 

When they part, she leans in and presses her lips against his more gently. It’s not an explosion, it’s not a collapse. It’s not some inevitable end they’ve been rushing towards. It’s a small step, taken on purpose, like so many before it. 

But they’re good at small steps. They’ve come a long way on nothing but small steps. The story doesn’t end when he shows up on her doorstep, it barely changes; it goes on. This isn’t the last big moment; there will be others after it, and they’ll come in their own time. 

The smile she’s used to seeing turned toward her from across the room is the same one on his face now. 

“Alright,” she says. “Let’s go on an anticlimactic first date.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying to figure out how to bring Jeff and Annie's story to a close was tricky for two reasons: one, my own personal ideal romance is some old friend spontaneously asking me to marry him, so I don't have to deal with dating - but Jeff's already spontaneously proposed to Britta _three times_ , so having him do that again but with Annie wouldn't have been a satisfactory end to his arc. But two, I also didn't want to go the route of having Jeff go to Annie with no plan or gesture at all, have the story be about self-restraint and careful prioritization of Annie's good, until the end when it just collapses into sexual tension which suddenly can't be fought anymore. I wanted to try to figure out what was the essence of Jeff and Annie's story, and weave the truth of that into their ending - I'm not sure that I succeeded, but I sure had fun trying, haha.
> 
> Chapter title from Taylor Swift's "New Year's Day", which captures this idea better than I ever could.
> 
> The final chapter is an epilogue with the full cast, which is _nearly_ finished. And now that I've got the bulk of the story published, I invite you to visit me on tumblr (catefrankie.tumblr.com) and send me asks! Talk about Jeff and Annie with me! Talk about Taylor Swift with me! Talk about love stories and love letters with me!!
> 
> Thanks as always for reading, and for your wonderfully kind comments. If my ego was an apple, it would be juice right now.


	7. Epilogue: the best thing that's ever been mine

The Barnes and Nadir double wedding is wild, slightly tacky, and very earnest. Abed reconnected with his college girlfriend in LA a few years after graduation, and then Troy really hit it off with a girl he met at a convention, and the rest was attached-at-the-hip, inevitable history which surprised exactly no one. Both the new married couples are clearly elated, and everyone’s families seem willing enough to go along for the ride. There are no fewer than three different surprise fully-choreographed musical numbers and two dramatic costume changes; the brides debut their eight-second-long friendship handshake to great acclaim; Troy Barnes weeps half a dozen times.

On the right hand of the head table there’s a mildly explicit flag flying, and under it an overly large table, the occupants of which have been leading both the heckling and cheers. The word around the reception is that these are the grooms’ college friends: Shirley Bennett, sought-after personal chef and the choir director at her growing community church; Britta Perry, part-time bartender, avid organic gardener, and founder of a volunteer organization to help at-risk teens that would have won several awards from local government if Britta didn’t keep turning them down; Craig Pelton, still the beloved dean of GCC; Frankie Dart, who keeps Greendale above water, is treasurer of Britta’s non-profit, and does marketing for Jeff Winger’s small law firm on the side; Jeff, who both practices and teaches law and still finds time to make it to the gym; and Annie Edison, whose career in the government has progressed to the point where she’s not allowed to talk about it anymore. They’re a cheerful bunch, certainly, but a little strange, prone to laughing at odd times, and perhaps a bit insular – they all dance with one another, in every imaginable combination, but they only dance with one another. 

The reception is winding to a close when Neil, who’s DJing, hands the microphone off to the “best non-groom man”. Jeff looks polished and impeccable, even after a long night, and leans to the side in a carefully apathetic slouch, but when his table greets him with raucous applause his façade cracks and his face softens into smile lines. He waves them to silence, taps the microphone with an ironic grin, and says, “So, we all know I was asked to give this toast because I’m the resident expert on marriage.”

This statement is immediately answered with derisive “boo”s and a few tossed crumpled-up napkins; someone enterprising throws a chunk of probably-stale bread at him. He dodges, looking gleeful, and says into the microphone, “I’m sorry, no, you’re right. ‘Expert on marriage’ makes it sound like I know a lot about the _concept_ of marriage. Actually, I just _have the best marriage_.”

“You’ve been married a year and a half,” Britta yells at him.

“Our wedding is _so_ much cooler than yours was,” Troy says. 

“Your whole romance was dragged out, predictable, and hackneyed, and your period drama themes were in constant conflict with the overall genre,” Abed puts in, adding, “No offense, Annie.”

“None taken,” Annie says, raising her glass. Somebody throws a napkin at her, for good measure.

“So given my position as the best husband here,” Jeff says, raising his voice, “I have some advice for the couples. First: don’t pay any attention to the people who don’t have faith in you.”

“ _Everyone_ had faith in you,” Craig says through cupped hands.

Jeff ignores him, and goes on dramatically, “They said it could never work.” 

“ _You_ said that!” Britta says.

“They said I didn’t deserve her –”

“You don’t,” Frankie says drily.

“They said the age difference would be a problem!”

“Honestly, I’ve always been more worried about the height difference,” Annie says absently.

Troy points at her across the room. “Yeah! What if you have all short sons and tall daughters?”

“But the fact of the matter is,” Jeff continues doggedly, “relationships require your persistence, your hope in the face of every obstacle. You’ll feel crazy for attempting it some days, but you have this chance, and you’re the one who has to decide what to do with it. Your friends and your community can support you, but you’re the one who has to wake up every day and decide to show up. You don’t build your marriage in a vacuum, but you _do_ build your marriage.” 

“That’s nice,” says Shirley.

“Boo!” says Britta. “You can do better, Winger!”

Jeff flips her off, blasé. “My second piece of advice is: get ready to evolve. People who love us have a way of seeing us more clearly and more truly than we see ourselves, and marriage has a way of letting you see yourself through their eyes. You’re going to get to know your familiar strengths and weaknesses in a new way.”

Annie says in a stage whisper, “He can’t cook anything that isn’t salad or poached chicken.” 

“You’re going to come to the end of your strength!” Jeff says.

“If I catch him before he has any hair product in, he’s physically incapable of making a convincing speech.”

“And you’re going to discover weaknesses you _never knew you had_.”

“He cried during a rerun of Cougartown the other day.”

“But that’s okay! Your spouse loves you for who you are – that’s not a free pass to stasis, it’s a challenge.” Jeff takes a breath, and proclaims, “ _Be worthy of your spouse_. The version of yourself you discover in their love is the truest version there is.”

Shirley “aww”s and takes Annie’s hand, and then asks in a low voice, “Did he just find a way to turn marriage into a competition?” Annie rolls her eyes, but smiles.

“But,” Jeff says, “my final word is this: I can stand up here and tell you that I worked hard on my relationship and that you’re going to have to work, I can tell you all the things I’ve learned and I can tell you you’re going to have to learn. I have and you will. But I know all of that because, when my life seemed like it had hit rock bottom, I met these people in front of me.” He points dramatically; Troy and Abed, then each guest at his table. “You all are my family. I would do anything for you, and I have learned so much from you. But of all the things I ever learned from this group, the things I took away from it at the end of the day, the _best_ , the _most important_ thing I got from all of you – is _all of you_.”

There’s a collective touched sigh. A few family members who don’t even know them wipe away stray tears. Jeff grins triumphantly, smacks the table, and takes it home: “It’s not about some moral of the story, some abstract lesson. It’s about _you_. You guys are what’s real, you and the love I have for you – if you weren’t real, the lessons wouldn’t matter, they wouldn’t ring true.” He turns to the head table. “You’ve all just chosen the person you’ll be spending the rest of your life with. I promise, if you hold tight to the people, if you make it your mission in life not to take them for granted, all the other lessons work themselves out.” He swipes a glass from the table, holds it aloft, and graces the room with a sweeping glance which comes to rest on his wife. “To the people we chose, the people who chose us, and the unbreakable bonds between us – may we remember to be grateful for it all. Cheers.” 

The rest of the reception raises its glasses and echoes his words, but his group is already on its feet, and then the best non-groom-man disappears into a huddled hug, everyone half-crying and saying they love each other and trying not to step on the brides’ dresses. Neil queues up a song, other guests flood the dance floor, and the group hug breaks off into couples and smaller clumps. Jeff catches Annie’s hand and twirls her. 

“Hey,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“I’m really glad I married you.”

She smiles up at him. “I’m glad you married me, too, it’s really been your salvation.”

“This is exactly why our wedding is better than yours was,” Troy says, dancing by them with his wife, while Abed and Rachel waltz by on the opposite side, the maneuver perfectly timed and almost certainly planned. 

Abed says, “Yeah, guys, it’s a party. Please, lighten up.”

“I’m certainly glad you all are married now,” Shirley puts in over Craig’s shoulder. “And Jeff, Annie, Britta’s right, it’s been a whole year and a half. When are you two gonna start having babies?”

“Shirley!” Britta exclaims. “You can’t ask them that!”

“Britta’s right,” Abed says. “It would open up a whole additional arc with new questions and further personal development. We have to let the audience rest in the fulfillment.”

“Actually –” Annie starts.

Troy gasps. “Oh my _god_ , can I be godfather?” 

Abed sighs, and says, “Crane shot to elicit emotion.” 

“Roll credits,” Rachel adds. Troy and Abed twirl their wives, and high five each other with their free hands.

Jeff looks at Annie, rolling his eyes and trying not to smile. She tilts her face up to be kissed; he obliging bends down, and then rests his forehead against hers and lets out a breath. 

“Love you,” she says, offering it up without any self-consciousness or fear.

“I love you.”

The song changes. Abed cuts in and starts polkaing with Annie, so Jeff steals Shirley from Craig, ignoring his mock-outrage. Britta and Rachel are jumping up and down and singing at the top of their lungs; Frankie’s dancing awkwardly next to Craig, but she looks affectionate and happy and not at all out of place. Troy breaks up Abed and Annie and the three of them hold hands in a chain and weave through the bodies on the dance floor. Shirley looks at Jeff and pulls a face; he laughs.

Old habits built up over years take over, and Jeff looks across the room and catches Annie’s eye. She’s laughing, but when she sees him she stills, and everything else drops away; there’s nothing in the world except for her smile and the way he can breathe easy when he looks at her. 

But when the moment shatters and everything crashes back in, there’s not less but more: not just the delicate sweetness of the look, but the certain knowledge of the love which is behind it. Not just the relief that he can find her across the room, but the comfortable faith that she’ll be there beside him when he wakes up tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. And not just the novelty of being loved, but the redemption there is in knowing that their children will grow up surrounded by their love and the love of their friends.

He never really stops being surprised by the way that life works – it’s a bit like what Abed always says about timelines, really. Your world looks complete, looks like everything. But the choices you make, in freedom and stubbornness and hope, reveal new possibilities, and then you find that the picture of everything that you knew before was only relative, and suddenly there's a whole new future in front of you. You can think that you know everything and find there’s still more to learn; you can be sure you’re already lucky beyond belief, and still be granted even more. The forces of chaos can be weathered with the predictability gained by honesty and self-acceptance. But life opens up in a completely new way to make room for love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Elroy isn’t here because even though I love and adore him, I didn’t think he would come, and Chang isn’t here because I am incapable of writing Chang. Duncan isn’t here because I forgot about him; let’s say he’s cat-sitting for Britta.)
> 
> A huge thank you to everyone who has read and commented on this story, which at times has felt less like a story and more like an academic essay on the philosophical and ethical merits of holding on versus letting go. I have been so touched and so encouraged by all your responses. This is literally the first time I’ve finished a multi-chapter story, so writing endings is wholly new to me, and I could not have asked for a kinder audience.
> 
> Chapter title from “Mine”, although there were plenty of runner-up lyrics – “can we always be this close, forever and ever?”, “you could stay”, “promise me this, that you’ll stand by me forever”, etc. I settled on Mine because the present tense, “you _are_ the best thing that’s ever been mine”, is a nice, cheerful middle finger to the finale line “I _got_ to be with you guys”. 
> 
> As for what comes next, for me and for Jeff and Annie – who knows? I have half an idea for a one-shot thing set around season 5 and 6, about Abed trying to helpfully set Jeff and Annie up by forcing them into tropey situations. I desperately want to write a J/A fic called “voted most likely to run away with you”, but I can’t figure out what it would be about. And I am theoretically open to writing one-shot sequels to this fic, with moments from their dating and married life. _But_ I do also have a Vampire Diaries/East of the Sun West of the Moon WIP which I abruptly dropped to write this, so we’ll just have to see where my always-unreliable inspiration takes me!


End file.
